


Lazarus' Death

by TheOtter (MenteEnBlanco)



Category: Batman - Fandom
Genre: M/M, dorks in love but theres not a lot of action, plot lands nowhere, tenderness?, this is literally just me figuring jason out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 09:30:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19971814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MenteEnBlanco/pseuds/TheOtter
Summary: Jason Todd is about to die and his brain (stupid thing) tries to make it better with a poem, and thoughts of a pretty bird.





	Lazarus' Death

**Author's Note:**

> bruh I did not finish this but i kinda liked where i was going so there u go

Instead of a master plan or a reason to live, when faced once again with its imminent death, Jason’s brain provides him with a poem. _Dying is an art,_ it recites leisurely, in the privacy of his skull. His mouth tastes of ash and iron, there’s the numbing pull of blood pouring out of him, and he finds no more fight inside, to try and get up. Everything is drowned by his raged breathing, loud inside the emptiness of the warehouse.

He’s dying.

It is a kind of surrender that he’s felt only once before. The tingling in his fingers spreading to his arms, and tears rising in his eyes, and his heart slowing down until everything is a grainy parody of life, and-

_Like everything else, I do it exceptionally well._ He does. He eases into death; his brain circling excitedly around the idea, sick joy pooling low in his gut. He’s going to _die._ D-i-e. And it is not as bad as before, not as important. There’s no guilt about bats or birds disturbing his departing. There’s only him, seven trained assassins —all dead, their corpses laid grotesquely around him, like a renaissance painting—, and a mouthful of blood sliding down his chin.

It feels _good_.

_I do it so feels like hell_. Jason bites his lip, and ponders the line. It _is_ one of his favorite poems, since well before he died. The morbid telling of suicide sends shivers down his back. He contemplates it way too much nowadays. Nothing holds him back from abandoning this monotone life of bullets and frantic killing and racing against the wind and never being quite enough. Nothing aside of spite —and a little bit of hope that he’s good leaving behind, good ignoring.

There’s a sharp pain in his stomach, he can barely feel it creep up his throat through the numbness. Suddenly his vision is reduced by a yellow haze, and spots of black ink cut the scene in front of him. It feels less than pleasant, but it’s _thrilling_. He’s pretty sure he’s shaking, the cold has set inside his bones already.

Like _hell_ , indeed.

(He figures he’s really sick, then, to be so enamored by the feeling.)

_I do it so it feels real._ And _this_ Jason doesn’t understand. Can’t relate to. Has to question. There’s nothing that looks more like a dream than dying. He guesses it is fit anyway, and chokes on the mess blocking his throat. The world is more than blurry by now, and he can feel small needles everywhere.

It’s almost like how leaving one’s body feels like, he can’t help to note.

_I guess you could say I’ve a call_. Oh, how he does.

Life for Jason has been nothing but calls, duties, oaths. He’ll have to ask for a fucking discount in hell for all the shit he had to go through. He vaguely thinks of Bruce, can’t really focus on remembering. Can’t even stop blinking at the yellow haze, his eyelids feeling as foreign as the small panic that wants to rise from the depth of his spine. Like narrating his own death in the final scene of a bad action movie, his thoughts are too abstract, too objective, too detached.

He’s not fazed, though. He’s grateful that he gets to have this moment before everything blissfully ends. He can feel himself, as if from far away, wail a little bit. It reverberates on each of his vertebrae, and causes him to gasp.

Over his body, suddenly, a window comes crashing down.

_“A miracle!”_ His mind provides.

* * *

_Out of the ash…_

When he wakes up, he doesn’t remember what the fuck happened. Assumes his night went wrong enough to get himself tied to a bed in the Cave’s medical space, but doesn’t care to stay around and figure it out.

The first thing he does, after registering the familiar-and-unfamiliar smell of Kevlar, is sneakily open an eye. There’s no sound of people in the cave with him, which brings a strange ache under his ribs instead of relief. He ought to be happy that nobody will see his scape.

Not trusting too much, Jason waits about five minutes before he tries to move, and the world paints red, and purple, and cold. The surprise throws him into a coughing fit that feels even worse. Like knives dragged from his throat. There’s a sound behind him, and then…

Then Tim Drake is helping him sit with careful, strong hands on his back. It hurts like hell, and he doesn’t stop coughing until Drake hands him a glass of water that he nearly chokes on. By the time he feels better, the world has gone blurry with tears, and Drake is sitting on a chair beside the bed. Jason scrunches his eyes until they can _see_ , and finds his replacement looking at him expectantly.

Something moves wildly inside his stomach at the sight. And this is, Jason knows, the small drop of hope in his empty glass. He tamps down on it viciously.

“You have been asleep for an entire week” is his greeting. To which Jason answers only with a raspy “Fuck you” and attempts to get up from the bed.

He can’t even move without it burning, and so he ends up panting half trapped into the blanket. Tim must find it fucking amusing, because he doesn’t say a word and instead watches him with half a smirk.

“Aren’t you gonna help me, mister _batshole_?” Jason rasps. It elicits a chuckle from the man, and Tim finally —thank _fuck—_ rises to help him-

Except instead of helping him, he pushes him right back to the bed. Which hurts. _The traitor._

Jason takes a few minutes to breathe through the burning of being forced back, all the while keeping an eye on Tim who appears to be rather pleased. Jason breathes in. Forces himself to calm down enough to notice that he’s holding Tim’s hand, but pretends he doesn’t. After a moment of heavy pants, he can finally concentrate again.

“Tell me Bruce isn’t here too.” He says in a defeated sigh, relaxing on the barely comfortable mattress and wishing he could cover his face with something.

There’s something really dangerous about Tim’s eyes so close to him. He feels open in ways he isn’t ready to own. It’s been like this ever since they got on good terms and even made regular team-ups together. Jason doesn’t have excuses as to why he feels the way he does because _that_ is another thing he won’t examine yet. He’s not fucking ready for it.

“Right upstairs, Dumbo” Tim says. Jason thinks that this lightning is harsh on his face, painting it with angular shapes that don’t look good on him. It makes the light freckles more prominent, and his slightly crooked nose stand out more. It also draws a halo of otherness around Tim that’s just _weird._

Instead of voicing his thoughts, he answers “Wow, asshole.” And frowns at him.

It’s a half-assed attempt at remaining in the conversation, he thinks. His limbs are starting to feel very heavy, weariness tugging at his mind. Making him blink dumbly at Tim, who looks too comfortable in his white shirt and pajama pants. The world spins a little, and now Jason recognizes the _weird halo_ for the thing that it is.

A haze.

“You!” Jason manages to spit, finally catching up with it all, his tongue dragging the words slowly, “You fucking _drugged_ me!”

Jason can feel his eyes go comically wide as he tries to move up from the bed. Tim squeezes the hand he’s holding and stops him from sitting up. That stupid nerd must have used his advantage to sedate Jason and not have to watch over him all night. Jason’s stomach revolts at the idea. It makes his insides go tight with anger.

(He tells himself it’s anger. It’s anger.)

Timothy smiles at him in a way Jason hasn’t seen in a few months. All of his teeth are showing, white and perfect, standing under his thin, rosy lips.

It’s the last thing he sees before the world goes black.

* * *

He’s allowed to stay in the manor for the duration of his recovery. _Allowed,_ Alfred says, as if he weren’t directly ordering him to. Jason huffs. The old man is, probably, the only person who could make him stay willingly.

He had been allowed out of bed two days after waking up, and spent the following days at the library, away from Bruce and his awkward attempts to talk to him.

The only highlight of his day is Tim. The little shit is _fun_ to have around, always throwing snarky comments, and willing to spend some of his free time entertaining Jason. Plus his fights with the demon brat are downright hilarious. Jason’s realizing slowly that the Tim Drake here is a lot different than the street’s Red Robin. It’s still not a bad sight.

However, he also realizes Tim is running on willpower and coffee most days, and is probably the least healthy human out there. Even worse than Dick, and that’s a near impossible feat. So he makes it his mission to get the man out of his misery —and himself, mostly, because there’s only so much one can do inside a library. Alfred, blessedly, supports his idea of getting Tim to either sleep or distract himself with something other than work. Jason hopes Tim chooses the former, given the way he stumbles blindly out of his room most days, but is sure a distraction will work better.

And so, he plants the idea of _maybe_ taking a walk around the woods in Tim’s head for a couple evenings, before outright asking him to accompany him. Jason excuses himself with the fact he’s been beaten to near death and Alfred won’t let him walk anywhere without company.

Tim says yes. Which is how they find themselves immersed into the line of trees that surrounds the manor, talking about meaningless stuff. It is a nice day, and the afternoon sun makes the trees look magical. Jason doesn’t voice any of that, too busy staring at Tim rant. Here, he can see that his hair has grown so long it almost touches his shoulders, and that his cheeks have sunken a lot. Tim looks yellow in under the blue skies. It starts a burning worry inside Jason’s chest that he tries to bat away.

They stay until Jason can’t walk anymore, his legs too stiff and painful to keep going. Tim sits on the ground next to him until late in the evening, and they return to the manor slowly. It feels like a victory, when Tim smiles all the way home.

* * *

“What is it with you lately?” Tim says over breakfast.

“The fuck do you mean?”

“You’ve been- Well, you must be bored out of your mind, you’ve been hanging around without complaining”

“Go fuck yourself” Jason says, for lack of a better answer, and that’s all they say about this new development.

* * *

Six weeks later it becomes painfully clear that Jason has healed enough to go off on his own. Maybe not patrol, but he’s perfectly capable of taking care of himself now. Alfred hasn’t said anything, but he keeps giving him meaningful glances that probably mean he has overstayed his welcome. But he’s stalling. He’s… Grasping at any possible excuse he can find, because even though being close to Bruce is torture, he’s made himself a routine now.

(It is _so_ very hard to let go of routines for him too.)

Every morning he spends at the library, reading poetry and drinking tea like a spoiled rich kid. Then, after lunch, Tim wakes up and accompanies him in a stroll around the gardens, and then allows him to help with whatever case files he has to work through. It makes Jason _warm_. He can admit to himself that he doesn’t want to lose _that_. Especially when Tim is so much fun to be with.

So he clings at any excuse he can find to spend just a little more time with Tim —it helps that Tim’s always up for company, lighting up beautifully when Jason offers to help him. He has noticed people don’t do that often, help Tim.

It makes Jason sad, so he goes away.

_I rise with my red hair_

_And I eat men_

_Like air._


End file.
